Website Security – Why https Now Helps Your Google Rank Too

Benefits from publishing your dental website with full encryption

Before we explore why publishing your practice website with full encryption can offer some great advantages, here’s a quick recap on what it actually means.

To use a familiar example, when you visit the site of your on-line bank and log into your account, the website address will be prefixed with https rather than the regular http and a small padlock symbol will appear adjacent to it.

This is telling you that anything that you enter on your screen will be encrypted before transmission to the web server and only decrypted on receipt. This means that anyone who is looking to intercept any data on route will be foiled. The levels of encryption vary but even at the most basic level, it is virtually impossible to decrypt data which is transferred in this way.

In the dental context, there are circumstances where data needs to be encrypted too. For example, where sensitive patient information is sent via a referral contact form, then the GDC guidelines advise that this should be encrypted. The information can then be retrieved into the safe keeping of the practice network using another encrypted connection.

Latest news from Google regarding encrypted websites

The story doesn’t end there for encryption. In it’s quest for a fully secure internet, and possibly spurred on by the revelations of web snooping by the NSA and other government agencies, Google is now offering an incentive for all website owners to publish their sites using encryption.

The incentive is that Google will now give your website a boost in the rankings if you follow recognised encryption protocols. Whilst they say that the boost will be relatively small initially, the feeling amongst the knowledgeable web fraternity is that this new ranking advantage could become more important over time. Effectively this is a quick and guaranteed “win” for your web marketing.

What should you do for your dental practice website?

Given the advantages of secure transmission for your website contact forms and now Google’s ranking incentive, it makes good sense to consider re-publishing the practice website using encryption.

Is this difficult and/or expensive?

Actually neither. Whilst there is a small cost to purchase the secure certificate (the server software which looks after the data exchange) and a few hours of admin. time to configure it, that’s pretty much all there is to it.

What about my existing web links in Google – what happens to them?

Google have provided a clear protocol for switching a website from http (non-secure) to https (fully secure) without losing your indexed web links (urls). Your web designer will be able to advise or failing that please call us at Dental Media.

Our recommended approach

At Dental Media we are now offering the option for all new websites to be published using full encryption. Existing clients will also be offered the opportunity to switch.

Summary

The benefits of publishing websites securely continue to increase. Dental professionals will be compliant with GDC guidelines and can also demonstrate responsibility for web data protection to their patients. Additionally, Google is now offering small but worthwhile ranking incentives for publishing under https. This benefit is expected to increase over time.

At Dental Media we have many years of experience with website encryption. We offer secure PCI DSS compliant servers (suitable for banking transactions and audited regularly) in an ISO 27001 compliant hosting environment. Please contact us on 01332 672548 to discuss secure, encrypted hosting for your dental website.